Twitter Mailbag: Fowlkes on Silva-Bonnar, Invicta, Cormier and Rousey in the UFC

What are Stephan Bonnar’s chances Saturday against Anderson Silva? Should the UFC buy Invicta and start promoting women’s fights? And what about Strikeforce – what’s going on there?

In our latest installment of Twitter Mailbag, MMAjunkie.com’s Ben Fowlkes answers those questions and many more, including who he wants on his side if he’s on the wrong end of a barroom brawl.

Check out all the questions below, and submit your own at @BenFowlkesMMA.

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Paul Hughes @b2bpaul

@benfowlkesMMA Barring the UFC Injury Curse striking Anderson down during his entrance, how does Stephan Bonnar win the fight this weekend?

First, let me issue the usual disclaimers about how anything can happen and small gloves and warrior spirit and blah, blah, blah. Now that that’s over with, I’ll tell you I think that Bonnar’s best hope is if Silva takes him extremely lightly. Maybe even so lightly that he stays out drinking caipirinhas all night before the fight. Then, when he shows up to the fight riding a sugar headache hangover, he decides to further limit himself by only using his left foot, which is actually still kind of sore after the game of drunken beach soccer he played at 3 a.m. Oh, and during that beach soccer game he looked over at one point and saw what he is sure was a mermaid. She waved once and then disappeared beneath the waves. A part of him wonders whether she was real, but now he is obsessed with finding her, even if he has to scour the ocean with a ragtag crew of mariners for the rest of his life to do it. In other words, he’s a little preoccupied come fight time.

If all that happens, I like Bonnar’s chances. If anything else happens, then probably not. But who knows? The fight gods have a mischievous sense of humor. Sometimes they can’t resist the temptation offered by an 8-to-1 underdog in a meaningless main event.

Jared McKenzie @TheRealChael

@benfowlkesMMA #tmb do we really want to encourage people accused of assault to get in fights?

OK, I guess we should take a minute and discuss this Jeremy Stephens thing, shouldn’t we? On one hand, yeah, if someone’s in jail for assault and you’re trying to spring them in time for a professional fight, it looks bad. And no, it doesn’t help if you make the argument that the guy needs to fight so he can make enough money to mount a legal defense. It’d be like if a stockbroker got arrested for insider trading and his boss argued in favor of letting him out just long enough for him to make some trades and pad his bank account. Ideally, he’d sort out the legal issues before resuming the sanctioned version of the normally illegal activity that he stands accused of. On the other hand, innocent until proven guilty, right?

The truth is, we don’t know whether Stephens deserves to be sitting in that Minnesota jail right now. Neither does Dana White. That’s why we have a court system, to figure all that stuff out. While I can appreciate White’s willingness to help out his fighters when they’re in a tight spot (see also: Dennis Hallman), it’s not a great look for a promoter to treat the legal system as just another malevolent annoyance designed to screw with his fight card. Plus, if I’m a fan watching a UFC event I’d rather not have to wonder if any of the professional fighters I’m supporting might soon be locked up because they used their powers for evil rather than good. But maybe I’m just weird that way.

If he retired now, he’d do so as the greatest middleweight of all time, if not the greatest MMA fighter ever. Beating up Bonnar won’t do much to add to that legacy. A win over Georges St-Pierre might, but it’s not as if he needs to beat up a smaller champion just so he can sleep at night. Whenever he feels like going, he can do so knowing that his place in MMA history is secure. The hard part for the greats is figuring out what to do with themselves once they have to trade this life in for something else. I don’t know if anybody can help him with that.

Deadpanda @DeadpandaCP

@benfowlkesMMA #TMB With Browne being injured in his loss, does Struve now skip ahead of him in the rankings despite Browne KOing him?

Can we talk about rankings here for a minute? Every week I get TMB questions that say something along the lines ‘If fighter X beats fighter Y, where will that put him in the rankings?’ It also works the other way, as you’ve demonstrated, where we occasionally have the patience to wait until after the fight before we start arguing about what number should show up next to a guy’s name in the Top 10 list.

But here’s the thing about rankings: they don’t matter. They aren’t even real. They’re just another Internet Top 10 list, about as meaningful and binding as someone’s list of the top 10 Bruce Willis movies (let’s just say “Surrogates” doesn’t make the cut, and leave it at that). The UFC is more likely to make matchups based on styles or, especially recently, convenience. As we’ve seen, you can be nowhere near the top 10 in a given division and still get a shot at the champ if the wind blows the right way. So why do we care?

I guess it’s because we need to find a way to quantify everything. It gives us the illusion of order, and we like that. But all rankings do is take what we already know (Browne beat Struve), blend it with what we think we know (Struve has gotten better, Browne lost only because he got injured, etc.), and the picture that emerges as a result is murky and speculative. Having numbers to attach to each fighter in a division is helpful, especially if we’re looking for a topic to argue about (and, let’s admit it, we usually are), but we shouldn’t place too much stock in it. At the end of the day, the only ranking that really matters in a sport like MMA is No. 1, and that’s often the easiest number for us to agree on, and therefore the least interesting one to talk about.

Nick McGraw @mcgraw1987

@benfowlkesMMA #tmb should the Browne fight have been stopped when he was clearly on one leg? Fight was never going to finish any other way

As much as I disagree with the second sentence in your question (sometimes fighters do win on one good leg or with one good arm or looking out of one good eye), I think the first sentence gives us something to think about. How hurt is too hurt? At what point does an injury merit a stoppage, especially if we can’t know the extent of the injury until the fight is stopped? After all, it’s not like you can call timeout in a fight and do an MRI.

If the big difference between Patrick Cote’s fight-ending knee blowout against Anderson Silva and Browne’s fight-altering hamstring injury against “Bigfoot” is that only one of them fell down and yelped in pain, then I guess what we’re saying is a lot depends on the fighter’s reaction. If you’re so hurt that you stop fighting, then we go ahead and wave it off. If you’re merely so hurt that you stop fighting well, then we let you take your chances.

Karan Ruprah @KSR_16

@benfowlkesMMA #TMB What is your thoughts on the downhill slope that Mayhem Miller is currently going down. Hope he gets better.

I watched his appearance on Ariel Helwani’s show, and it left me feeling both confused and sad. I don’t know what’s going on with him, but it isn’t good. I like Miller, both as a person and a fighter. He’s always marched to the beat of his own drummer, but he’s also always been one of the most interesting and intellectually curious people in this sport. I want to see good things happen to him. Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem like that’s the direction he’s headed in right now.

Daddy Fats @THE_FLEEK

@benfowlkesMMA How about a UFC version of Behind the Scenes? The @InvictaFights piece was very interesting. #TMB

I’d love to. It’s just that the UFC isn’t quite as eager to hand over an all-access pass with no preconditions or expectations other than a fair appraisal, which is exactly what Invicta did. The UFC has gotten very good at ferrying the media from one controlled environment to another on fight week, showing us what it wants us to see and keeping us from the other stuff. But if the powers that be at Zuffa would agree to pull back the curtain and let me in, I’d be all over it.

CageScience.com MMA @CageScience

@benfowlkesMMA #TMB What are the chances you think Minotauro will retire on saturday with a win? how about a loss? I think its 75% and 30%

We agree on one thing: Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira is the type of dude who’s way more likely to call it quits on a win rather than a loss. He’s too competitive not to want to jump back in after getting beat, but then there’s that old dilemma again. No fighter wants to go out on a loss, but a win just makes them think that maybe they’ve still got a few more left in them. Nogueira? He could hang it up any time and feel just fine about his career. There’s nothing left to prove, and not much reason to think he could stay healthy enough to prove it even if it there were. I’d love to see him walk away while that walk is but a mild limp rather than a sad crawl. Do I think it’ll happen this weekend? I’m not overly optimistic.

Morgan Waltz @MorganWaltz

@benfowlkesMMA Do you think the end of Strikeforce is finally here?? Wouldn’t it be better for the fans and fighters if it went away? #tmb

It would be better for some of the fighters. That is, it would be better for guys like Gilbert Melendez and Luke Rockhold, who have a UFC roster spot just waiting for them. Other fighters would get tossed back into the regional hopper, though that might not be all bad either. Strikeforce has such a dead end feel to it these days that you just wish someone would go ahead and put a pillow over its face. To hold this many promising careers hostage is damn near unconscionable.

Jesse Raine @jesseraine

@benfowlkesMMA if these Strikeforce/Showtime rumors come true, does Dana wise up and bring the women over or does everybody go to Invicta?

Even if the entire Strikeforce organization does a UFC 151-style vanishing act, I don’t see the UFC immediately embracing women’s MMA. Not as a whole, anyway. Dana White seems very eager to get into the Ronda Rousey business, but he appears nowhere near as interested in any other fighters or any other weight class. Really, even Strikeforce is only mildly interested at this point. It mostly limits itself to women’s 135-pound fights, and there’s only limited action in that division. I think Invicta is already the preferred destination for most female fighters, and will only become more so if Strikeforce disappears. What I wonder is whether Invicta can find enough work for them all without spending itself out of business.

Tony Fortune, Ph.D. @toneloc2424

@benfowlkesMMA Did u enjoy attending the Invicta fights and interviewing the fighters as much as u have at UFC events? #TMB

It’s difficult to compare a live Invicta event to a UFC show. They’re such completely different products, and in completely different settings. When you’re sitting in the MGM Grand in Vegas (or the Globe in Stockholm or the HSBC Arena in Rio or the Air Canada Centre in Toronto), there’s this big but distant feel to it all. It’s very different from sitting with about 2,000 people in Kansas City’s Memorial Hall watching fighters who will, win or lose, be signing autographs next to the concessions stand in about 10 minutes. Both are enjoyable in their own ways. As a journalist, the Invicta event provided the chance to do something different and tell a new story, and you don’t get that at UFC events. At the same time, that Invicta story is one you can really only do once.

Barry Williams @vamtnhunter

@benfowlkesMMA Do enough casual fans know how good Cormier is for him to get immediate UFC title shot? If not, can UFC hype machine fix that?

I’d like to think that MMA fans are not so exclusively focused on the UFC that they have no idea who Cormier is, especially after his win over Josh Barnett. But I could be wrong. Maybe the UFC needs to pump him up first, do some pro wrestling-style tease (“Cormier is coming! Cormier is coming!”) before it brings him over. The first step is finding someone for him to fight, if only so he doesn’t waste any more valuable time sitting around and waiting for his employers to get their acts together.

Josh C @J05HC

@benfowlkesMMA you get jumped by 3 guys in a seedy bar in Montana at 2am. What current UFC fighter do you want by your side? Why?

I would say Nick Diaz, except a) does he still count as a current UFC fighter? and b) something tells me I’d stand a better chance of convincing him to go for a stoned bike ride at 2 a.m. long before I could ever get him to throw back beers at Charlie B’s well into the morning hours. Of course, Anderson Silva could probably go all Matrix on those guys while I just sit back and try not to vomit, but it would feel wrong not to at least help out a little. And while Alistair Overeem would be great to have around just as a violence deterrent, if some trouble did pop off he might very well end up killing everybody in the bar, at which point I become an accomplice to mass murder.

With all that in mind, I’ll take Brian Stann. I like that he can knock people out when he has to, but has the restraint to know when enough’s enough. Plus, I like the image of the two of us fighting back-to-back like they do in action movies. Naturally, he’ll be the one who’s super good at fighting and I’ll be the one who makes wry quips about the mess we’ve gotten ourselves into right before getting decked in the mouth.

Toya Rowlette @Toya1682

@benfowlkesMMA What do you think it would take for MMA fighters to unionize?

For one, a committed, long-term effort from those with the most pull, such as champions and former champions, who also happen to be the ones who need a union the least. For another, a sense of solidarity that we really haven’t seen among pro fighters, ever. It’s funny, I hear fans and media talk about the prospects of a fighter union, but I almost never hear about it from fighters. Maybe they’re just scared to utter the words in the presence of a reporter, or maybe they just aren’t interested in the idea. I really can’t tell, but either way I don’t think we’re anywhere close to seeing it happen.

Josh Kary @jkary90

@benfowlkesMMA Is Cormier going to actually get to 205 easily? He’s pretty thick, I don’t get why everyone thinks it will be easy for him…

I don’t think it will be easy, but he did wrestle at 96 kg (about 211 lbs.) for quite a while. Granted, cutting that weight nearly killed him in the 2008 Olympics, but both he and former USA Wrestling coach Kevin Jackson will tell you now that it was because he wasn’t doing it the right way, or with the proper attention to keeping his weight down in between cuts. Could he do better now, with a better approach to nutrition and the money to hire someone like Mike Dolce to help him with the hard parts? Sure, I think so. Should he? I see no reason to, at least as long as he’s running through heavyweights.

Ryan Manahan @AFragileSmile

@benfowlkesMMA Invicta is a good little promotion. Where do they go from here ? A TV deal would be nice but who would give them one?

From what I’ve heard, getting a TV deal for Invicta isn’t the problem. There have been offers and interest from more than one suitor, according to the rumors. It’s getting a good TV deal that won’t completely destroy Invicta’s independence and original vision that’s a little tougher to pull off. Invicta president Shannon Knapp was around at the IFL when it got itself into bad TV deals, and I suspect she learned some valuable lessons from a close-up view of that disaster.

Rob LiCalsi @roblicalsi

@benfowlkesMMA can you see a co-promotion scenario w/ UFC & Invicta? Major female fights put on UFC shows but under the Invicta banner? #TMB

While hanging around the fighter hotel in Kansas City last weekend I heard a lot of theories for what the future of Invicta would look like, and that was definitely one of them. More specifically, I heard from those who predicted that the UFC would eventually buy Invicta and run it as its own separate organization, maybe occasionally pulling Invicta fighters over to a UFC card when there was a women’s mega-fight that warranted it. It seems far-fetched to me, especially while Zuffa has Strikeforce and Showtime and FOX and a rash of fighter injuries and declining TV ratings to worry about. Now is not the time to add another headache to the list.

Jonny McDowell @JonnyMcBacon

@benfowlkesMMA if come saturday Anderson Silva wins emphatically, do you think Dana will try and make him stay at 205lbs to fight Jon Jones?

I don’t think Dana White – or any human being, for that matter – can make Silva do something he really doesn’t want to do. My bet is we see Silva vs. GSP way before we can even start seriously talking about Silva vs. Jones.

ryan211 @ryan211

@benfowlkesMMA JDS has 10 straight wins and beat half of the top 10. Is his dominance overlooked? Jon Jones gets much more attention #TMB

You’re right that Jones gets more attention, maybe in part because he seems to be an almost supernatural phenomenon, while Junior Dos Santos simply seems very, very good. JDS also lacks that special star quality that Jones has. For whatever reason, Dos Santos doesn’t evoke that same impassioned response, so he’s just quietly on the way to making his case as one of the greatest heavyweights of the modern era.

Chris Powell @airforcewriter

@benfowlkesMMA With the UFC’s release of Johnson, do you think we’ll see fighters become even more unwilling to accept short-notice fights?

There’s an interesting wrinkle in the DaMarques Johnson release saga today. UFC matchmaker Joe Silva explained to Ariel Helwani that he cut Johnson at least in part because he missed weight by a hefty margin even after agreeing to a 175-pound catchweight bout against Gunnar Nelson.

Said Silva: “I thought it was incredibly unfair to Gunnar Nelson to fight someone that much larger than him. Johnson told me he could make the weight. He’s not doing me a favor if he missed weight because I could have gotten someone else who would have made the weight. … I never pressure anyone to take late-notice fights. I got a bunch of guys who want to fight. If one says no, I will find someone else. No problem.”

Two things here: 1) Silva’s right – and Johnson agrees – that once you agree to make the weight, regardless of the short notice or other circumstances, you have made a commitment that you are expected to fulfill, but 2) Silva also told Helwani that the bout was first offered to Rich Attonito, who initially accepted, then turned it down when he decided he couldn’t make the 175-pound catchweight. At that point, Silva said, the UFC cut him.

So to sum up, the guy who turned down the short-notice fight rather than show up and miss weight? He got cut. The guy who took the fight and then missed weight? He got cut, too. Silva can say there’s no pressure to accept these short-notice fights, but it sure doesn’t look that way. Also, if the UFC has “a bunch of guys who want to fight,” why was Johnson, whose medical suspension ended less than two weeks before the Nelson fight, No. 2 on the list of possible replacements?

I understand that the UFC needs guys who will not just agree to fight, but also make the contracted weight and show up ready to roll. At the same time, it should have known that Johnson – who’d been medically suspended for 45 of the 56 days between his knockout loss to Mike Swick and his submission loss to Nelson – might not have been in tip-top fighting shape just then. You could argue that, in that case, he should have turned it down, and you’d be right. Then again, look at what happened to the last guy who turned it down (albeit a day after initially accepting it).

As for whether any of this will make other UFC fighters less likely to take short-notice fights, I’m not sure. Maybe the takeaway here is that if you’re not absolutely sure you can make the weight the moment you get the phone call, you’re better off saying no rather than risking it. After all, if you say yes and then realize you’re not going to make it – even if you realize it the very next day – it could get you fired. Seems to me that this information would only make it harder to book short-notice replacements, which the UFC finds itself in need of pretty frequently these days.

Ben Fowlkes is MMAjunkie.com and USA TODAY’s MMA columnist. Follow him on Twitter at @BenFowlkesMMA. Twitter Mailbag appears every Thursday on MMAjunkie.com.

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